"I don't dare, Louisa, I don't dare," groaned John, leaning his head against one of the pillars of the porch. "I can't tell you the fear I have of Susanna after the way I've neglected her this last year. If she should come in at the gate this minute, I couldn't meet her eyes; if you'd read the letter she left me, you'd feel the same way. I deserved it, to the last word, but oh, it was like so many separate strokes of lightning, and every one of them burned. It was nothing but the truth, but it was cut in with a sharp sword. Unless she should come back to me of her own accord, and she never will, I haven't got the courage to ask her; just haven't got the courage, that's all there is to say about it." And here John buried his head in his hands. A very queer thing happened to Louisa Banks at this moment. A half-second before she would have murmured:-- "This rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I!" when all at once, and without warning, a strange something occurred in the organ she had always regarded--and her opinion had never been questioned--as a good, tough, love-tight heart. First there was a flutter and a tremor running all along her spine; then her eyes filled; then a lump rose in her throat and choked her; then words trembled on her tongue and refused to be uttered; then something like a bird--could it have been the highly respectable good-as-new heart?--throbbed under her black silk Sunday waist; then she grew like wax from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet; then in a twinkling, and so unconsciously as to be unashamed of it, she became a sister. You have seen a gray November morning melt into an Indian summer noon? Louisa Banks was like that, when, at the sight of a man in sore trouble, sympathy was born in her to soften the rockiness of her original make-up. "There, there, John, don't be so down-hearted," she stammered, drawing her chair closer and putting her hand on his shoulder. "We'll bring it round right, you see if we don't. You've done the most yourself already, for I'm proud of the way you've acted, stiffening right up like an honest man and showing you've got some good sensible Hathaway stuff in you, after all, and ain't ashamed to turn your back on your evil ways. Susanna ain't one to refuse forgiveness." "She forgave for a long time, but she refused at last. Why should she change now?" John asked. "You remember she hasn't heard a single word from you, nor about you, in that out-of-the-way place where she's been living," said Louisa, consolingly. "She thinks you're the same as you were, or worse, maybe. Perhaps she's waiting for you to make some sign through me, for she don't know that you care anything about her, or are pining to have her back." "Such a woman as Susanna must know better than that!" cried John. "She ought to know that when a man got used to living with anybody like her, he could never endure any other kind."